


Marshmallow Fluff

by on_the_wing



Series: The Absence of Monsters [2]
Category: Starfighter (Comic)
Genre: Face Slapping, Fantasizing, Flangst maybe, Fourth Wall Demolition, I know I put "fluff" in the title but it's actually kind of angsty, Intimidation, Knifeplay, M/M, Nicknames, Non-Consensual Violence, Sisterknives, Spanking, Topping from the Bottom, Whimsy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-03 23:00:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6630541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/on_the_wing/pseuds/on_the_wing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A companion piece to Ace of Swords; they happen simultaneously and begin when Deimos and Praxis meet in the flashback in Chapter 4 of the comic. </p><p>Deimos makes a surprising discovery during a routine intimidation, and promptly gets even more carried away than Praxis did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marshmallow Fluff

“Why should we do what you say?” a fighter shouts from the back. He’s tall and brawny, but he has floppy ear-length hair and smooth, unscarred skin, which I can see quite a bit of given his tank top. After a second I place his accent as Colony Three. They live soft there.

 _He_ could take this one in a moment, but He lets me do it because he knows I like to be useful to Him. I slip up behind the big man and pull out Katya, then flick her open right behind his back. He hears the sound and jumps—he must have heard it before—and before he can move I hold the point against the small of his back.

He whips his head around to look at me, and I almost laugh at the shock on his face. It’s not as if I even cut him! His body might be all hard muscle, but what a marshmallow. I grin and shush him. His eyes widen and he turns obediently to the front as He, seeing that I’m in place, starts speaking.

“You’ll do what I say,” He drawls in that voice that makes my pants tight, “if you know what’s good for you.”

Marshmallow tenses up, but says nothing. _Good boy._ He really does have a nice back. I start idly drawing designs on it, and he shivers. God I love this.

I feel pressure on Katya’s point—he’s leaning back! Is he stubborn or just some kind of pervert? I take the challenge and hold firm, and the point pushes through his shirt. He looks back at me again. He’s sweating, but his expression is unreadable.

I click my tongue at his bad behavior and hold the knife steady. He looks forward again but pushes back even more, until I feel the point breaking through the skin. He sucks in a ragged breath, then stops where he is, maybe half a centimeter in. Good—I wasn’t looking forward to ruining that back, not to mention the possibility that he might keel over and leave me with a giant mess to explain to the officers, and worse, to Him. I’m supposed to intimidate challengers, not send them to the med bay.

I figure he’s learned his lesson, so I pull Katya back (wiping her quickly on his shirt on the way out) and turn to go.

“Wait,” he calls plaintively.

 _What the hell?_ I turn to look at him in case it’s a trick.

“Well I—“ he mumbles. “I mean, what are you doing?”

 _—later tonight_ , my dirty mind supplies. _Idiot, I was just standing here holding this thing—you’re the one who was impaling yourself on it. What were YOU doing?_

“I get that you were threatening me, but why? What’s he to you?”

Without thinking I look for Him. How am I supposed to answer that? Why does this idiot care, anyway? I just stuck a fucking knife in his back, does he really need to know my inner motivation?

“Don’t you ever talk?”

_Don’t you ever shut up?_

“I guess n—”

I have to make him shut up, or I won’t have done my job. I whip out Katya again and press her blade against his mouth. He freezes again, closing his eyes, and happy warm fireflies dance in my stomach. This is much better. I turn the knife slowly to and fro, like teasing little kisses, then sink the point delicately into the corner of his mouth, just enough to squeeze out a drop or two of blood. He inhales sharply and opens his eyes, staring down at me without moving his head. He cannot _believe_ I would be so cruel. Marshmallow.

I put my finger to my lips to shush him again, just to make sure he gets the point—pun intended—and he starts to nod but winces as the knife jars his cut. “Mmm hmm,” he agrees, eyes wide. He has pretty eyes, dark and tilted up slightly at the corners. Pretty everything, in fact. Too bad he’s so stupid. Too bad he went up against Him. I can’t even imagine what that would be like. People do it a lot, though.

I smile and lower the knife, and Marshmallow looks away, breathing hard and wiping his mouth to see how much blood is on it. I glance down. Oh my. He _is_ a pervert. I make my getaway, before he tries to ask me to prom or something.

Just to be sure, I wait outside the common room and tail him when he comes charging out a few moments later. Hmm, not looking angry the way I thought he might. I get a look at the back of his shirt as he strides off and I’m glad it’s black, because if it were any other color that would be quite a stain. As is it almost looks like sweat, if you don’t pay too much attention. I bet it doesn’t _smell_ like sweat though. I wonder if he’s going to the med bay, or Command, or to his room to patch himself up. Hopefully the latter.

Huh. The gym? Well, I guess they do have a first aid kit in there. He doesn’t seem to be using it though. He just barges over to the nearest stack of free weights and starts waving them around like a gorilla. Could he be aware that I followed him? Is this another gesture of defiance? Could he be _flirting_ with me? He does glance around suspiciously a few times, but never at me, just at the people staring at his back and eyeing the red smear he left on the bench after he did presses. His form is okay, but he’s going way too fast, using momentum to move the weight, which is efficient if you’re trying to save your strength but doesn’t exactly build muscle. I wonder if he always does that or if we got him bothered. He looks bothered. And hot.

Maybe I shouldn’t call him Marshmallow. It doesn’t suit him. I settle on Marsh instead. That sounds like one of those English names, the ones that say where your ancestors came from. Not that he’s English, if he comes from Three, but who cares. Maybe his ancestors lived by a marsh, with birds and reeds and mysterious invisible things peeping and chirping and croaking from all directions, like that old nature video from Earth I saw when I was a kid. He seems like someone who’s always had his feet on solid ground, though. But then why does he ask so many questions?

 _Why? What’s he to you?_ I could never explain why I feel the way I do about Him, even if I wanted to. My throat grinds up words and they come out all broken. It’s not just that He pulled those thugs off of me, a complete stranger, and then didn’t turn me in when I stabbed one of them. He didn’t even hit me when He realized He’d lost His things because of me. It’s more that there’s only one of Him, and He’s not the biggest or the strongest or even the best at fighting—although He is very good at fighting. He knows what it is to be alone against many. But even alone He roars and shines against the dark, and He never gives up.

I want Him to know He never has to be alone again. But who am I to promise that I’ll survive for Him, in this war especially? No one can really make promises. But I wish I could. He calls me mouse, and He’s my lion, and some day I’ll nibble His cords through and no one will stop us.

Someone comes along and gives me a funny look, which is not surprising given that I’m tucked into a corner half-straddling a potted rubber tree. I decide I’d better move, and in the process I lose Marsh for a moment. Oh—there he is, heading toward the showers. My mouth waters like Pavlov’s dog but there’s no chance he won’t see me from there. For a moment I wish _I_ had someone I could send in to watch him, but that’s stupid, then _they_ would see him instead of me! Maybe I could hack in and get the security footage—who am I fooling, I’m no hacker—or bribe one of the guards or something. No self, that is STUPID. Stay on task. Think of Him. No, not of looking at _Him_ on security footage either…STAY ON TASK, IDIOT.

***

 _He_ joins me in the hallway later, rubbing His swollen knuckles. “That went pretty well. Did that wanker from Three behave?”

He doesn’t like me to touch Him but sometimes I just can’t help myself, I have to be close to Him. Today I feel stronger though, so I just look at His jawline and try not to drool. “I think he likes my knife,” I whisper.

He gives me a dubious look, then shrugs. “Whatever. He didn’t run to Mommy, though?”

I shake my head.

“Good. We shut him up. We’ll have to keep an eye on him though, just to make sure.” Each ‘we’ makes me feel light and floaty. But then I watch Him walk away, and with every step a fist squeezes my heart.

I have to get away. I have to be alone. I have to think of something else.

***

I get back to my room and lock myself in. My roommate won’t be back for hours, we have training and he’s a suckup. No one cares if I skip, either, it’s just to keep us busy until we get to base. We don’t even get to do simulations yet, just physical training and reflex testing and crap like that. It’s because we’re disposable. Not like the navigators. I hear they actually get to go to school. But then again, they probably have to pay for it.

Ugh. That is not the line of thinking I need to be following. I take out Katya and clean her, then clean Galya and Yelena for good measure, even though they don’t need it. I kiss them each goodnight and put them under my pillow. They won’t mind going to bed early, not like the originals. Original Yelena is a sleepyhead now, she’s never going to wake up. Original Galya might as well be dead. I don’t know what happened to original Katya. She was just a baby when they took her away. I hope she’s having a better time than I am.

Also not a comforting line of thought. Get it together, self. I pick up my tablet but there’s nothing on it I haven’t read or played or jerked off to a hundred times, and I can’t afford to buy anything new from the ship’s store. Not until we get to base and I start earning money. God that’s going to be good. I can steal consumables but books and games are another matter entirely. I would like music but I don’t dare listen to it—it pulls me in and I lose awareness of my surroundings. You would think games would do that but somehow I can keep an ear open while I play them, and same with books. Oh, well. I’m just going to have to tell myself a story, like the ones I used to tell my sisters. Well, except different. I don’t think this one would be proper to tell them. That’s why I put them to bed early.

***

The Misadventure of Marsh and the Malchik 

_One day I was walking down the hall to breakfast, dilly um, dilly om, when a swamp monster jumped out and dragged me into his lair_. Well, technically, it was Marsh, not a swamp monster, and he dragged me into a storage room, not his lair, but it sounds better the first way, don’t you think? Well, I don’t think so. Marsh is a lot cuter than a swamp monster and considerably less hungry for human flesh— _I think?!_ —and the storage room is a lot drier and less smelly. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I don’t know, Marsh is also a lot angrier than a swamp monster, at me in particular, and at a friend of mine. Swamp monsters have no particular animosity, they just want to eat your face because it is delicious.

Anyway, Marsh throws me up against the wall and pins my hands above my head before I can get hold of anything. He only has to use one hand for both of mine and boy is that embarrassing. He steps up close so I can’t knee him in the balls and carefully pats me down with the other hand, removing Galya from my sleeve, Katya from my hip pocket, and Yelena from my boot. He places them on top of a shelf that’s too high for me to reach—HEY, NOT FAIR—and I take the opportunity to jump on his foot and then headbutt him in the chin.

“Hey!” he shouts, staggering.

I scrabble with my feet and manage to walk them up his legs, pushing him further away and freeing one of my hands. With one last desperate push I rear up and grab the edge of the shelf. It tips, and Yelena slides off, bouncing off my shoulder and clattering to the floor. Marsh surges forward with a snarl and now my entire body is dangling from that one hand, ow Marsh, what the fuck. I reach up with my other hand and grasp his wrist, pull myself up far enough to bite that fucker until he drops me. _Now who’s hungry for human flesh?!_

I hit the floor, roll and scramble for Yelena, who seems to have shot off into a corner, which is not like her. She likes to stay close to me. Maybe she wanted to get away from Marsh and his big grabby hands. His big grabby hands which are currently grabbing me by the waistband and pulling me back. _Maybe I should wear looser pants_ , I think as I kick him about the shoulders and chest. _Naw. These look so much better_.

Deprived of boot purchase, I claw at the floor to get to Yelena—so close!—but it’s not terribly effective because, you know, floor. “Just STOP it,” Marsh shouts, grabbing fistfuls of my jacket and slowly inching his way up my torso.

I hiss. No one separates me from Yelena! The eldest and trustiest of my sister-knives! No matter how muscular and vigorous and—damn, he’s got my arms now.

“Can you stop trying to stab me for JUST ONE SECOND.”

Trying? Tch. I _did_ stab him yesterday. What is this ‘try’? I make another break for it, but his full weight is on top of me now and there’s no way I can get out from under him. _Ooh baby_. It’s actually kind of calming though, I don’t know why. I scowl back at him to let him know such liberties are not appreciated. One must keep one’s dignity.

He feels me relaxing, and sits up to flip me over on my back. I immediately knee him, only not anywhere tender because I’m starting to get ideas, and he sighs and throws himself on top of me again, pinning my hands to the floor. “You know, I wouldn’t have to keep doing this if you would just stop attacking me.”

 _Duh_. Why do you think I did it? Also, who attacked who first? Well, technically that was me, I guess, if you count yesterday. I glare up at him, panting.

“You must be able to talk. They wouldn’t have recruited you if you couldn’t talk. We need to be able to talk to our navigators in combat, we don’t have time to type and they can’t see us signing.”

Damn it, he’s not as stupid as I thought.

He sees my face and grins. “I knew it. So talk. What is your game?”

I shake my head.

He leans closer. “Talk…or I’ll make you talk.”

That is too much. It may be an empty threat but my head still swims. In the marsh. Marsh Marsh Marsh. With little ducklings and—I rear my head up and kiss him hard on the mouth.

He squeaks, and those dark eyes get wider, but he doesn’t pull away for a few seconds. “What are—“ he sputters.

I kiss him again, more gently this time.

“Mmmm. What’re you—“

Kiss.

“Are you—“

Much longer kiss. This time he bends his head down and I get to rest mine.

“What are you doing. No really—” I look up at him with bedroom eyes—storeroom eyes?—and he kisses me, his tongue probing my mouth and making me squirm and moan. _Oh Marsh, don’t ever stop_. But he does.

“Okay, this is it. No more kisses until you give me some answers. I mean it this time.” He’s panting and flushed, but he evades my lips and does his best to look stern.

“No,” I say. “No answers until you fuck me.”

His jaw drops. I graciously refrain from going in for the kill, er, kiss.

“But we don’t have any LUBE!” he blurts out. His face has gone pure fuschia.

 _Is that all?_ “I have some,” I tell him. “In my jacket pocket.”

“But I patted you down!”

“It’s in a packet,” I explain patiently. “Individual packets. You weren’t feeling for a packet, you were feeling for hard things.”

His face turns from fuschia to scarlet. _So easy_. “Wait, you just carry lube around with you all the time in case someone drags you into a storeroom?”

I smirk, then shrug.

“Well, fair enough.”

“So let me _get_ it already.”

“Wait a minute, I didn’t agree to this.”

Yet. I dart up and lock lips with him again, wrapping my legs around his hips and writhing against him.

“Well—mmm—okay, maybe I did. Do. Mmmh.” After a minute he stops kissing me and rolls off.

We stand up, and I rub my aching wrists. “Give me my knives back first.”

He narrows his eyes. “Are you going to use them on me?”

“During sex?” I’m shocked. “What kind of a pervert do you think I am?”

Saddest crushed puppy face.

“You’ll have to bring a different knife if you want that. How dare you imply that I would use MINE that way?”

“Well, why do you need them back now then?”

“Because…they can see us from where they are.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Uh….huh.” He reaches up to the shelf for Galya and Katya while I collect Yelena from the floor, and carefully hands them to me. I give him a withering look and stalk by to lean against a crate, where I pull off my boots and stash the girls in one, my socks in the other. I shake them down to the toe where it’s nice and dark, then look up to find Marsh watching me.

“Can’t they hear?” he asks.

“They’re KNIVES.”

“Okay.”

I glare again.

He comes up and puts his arms around me. I flinch, but then settle in against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. “I’m glad they can’t hear,” he says after a minute. “I don’t know about you, but I have the feeling I might be…loud.”

I stare up into his eyes, and they’re black like—someone else’s. _Don’t think_. I grab the back of his head and kiss him fiercely, because this is Marsh, and he smells different and feels different and his dark hair is all its natural color and parted in the middle, and his left earlobe is velvety and innocent when I reach up and nip it, and he lets me touch him all over, and doesn’t shove me away. Marsh.

And he’s right, he is loud. Already. I like it when a man isn’t stingy with his voice. Yeah yeah, shut up, I know that’s coming from _me_. I happen to like watching, or in this case listening to, people do things I have trouble doing. Anyway…back to our story. I break away and start to yank my clothes off, somehow remembering to take the lube out of my pocket. He’s pulling his off more slowly, which I appreciate on aesthetic grounds even if I am getting impatient.

I toss my clothes onto a crate and help Marsh with his. I check his back and find a neat square bandage where Katya poked him yesterday. “Good,” I mutter. It was bothering me that I hadn’t seen him take care of it. Not that I care if he gets an infection—well, I guess I do, if he goes to med bay and they start asking questions—but it just bothers me on principle. You get a wound, you disinfect it and then seal it off somehow. That’s just what you _do_. Otherwise it’s gross. Even animals clean their wounds.

“What do you care, Stabby? Stabby McStabberson?”

I giggle in spite of myself.

“No wait, you’re from Five. Stabya…Stabovitch…”

“…Stabonov,” I supply.

He rewards me with a kiss and we get distracted for a moment. Except wait, this _is_ what we were supposed to be doing. Except we were also getting him undressed. He’s trying to kick his boots off without unlacing them and it’s not working, and he can’t get his pants off without getting his boots off first. Oh for fuck’s sake.

I drop down to my knees and hear a muffled gasp from above. _You wish, Marshy boy._ Well, wishes can come true, maybe, just not yet. I slowly unlace his boot, and, just to tease him, run my tongue up it from toe to top. I can hear him panting. I repeat the process with the other boot, then pull it off him, then pull off the first boot.

I reach for his sock, but he ducks down to pull it off himself. “Don’t lick my feet, they might be smelly!”

I crack up. ‘YOU’RE smelly.”

“What?” he gasps.

“Just kidding. You smell great.” I pull down his pants and nuzzle his magnificent thighs. He really does smell good. My hands drop down and rub his calves, lift them one by one to encourage them to step out of the pants. I can’t stop sucking and biting and breathing in his thighs.

My hands move up to the band of his underwear. It’s black too. Everything they give us is black. We are Czernobog’s little minions but right now this is about life, and boy is there life stirring in there. I rub my face against the bulge and he whines and jerks.

“Steady,” I say, gripping him by the hips. He pants, but quiets down. I nuzzle till I find the wet spot, and touch my tongue to it. He lets out a strangled whimper. I draw my nails lightly up and down the backs of his thighs and roll my face against his groin some more, and he’s moaning, fingers running through my hair.

I finally take pity on him and pull down his boxer briefs. He kicks them off almost angrily and I come back up to his—oh my. No way am I going to be able to fit that whole thing in my mouth, but I bet I’ll have fun trying.

And I do.

We’re _both_ getting loud, and I’m trying my best to rub up against one of his legs even though it’s throwing off my balance, when he suddenly pulls me off with a growl. “Get UP.”

“What?” I whine. “What’d I do?”

He hauls me to my feet. “That can’t be efficient. Or comfortable.”

“Who _cares_?”

“I do.”

I let out a noise like a teapot boiling over, and what is he doing? He’s picking up his clothes _NOOOO_. “What are you DOING? Are you LEAVING?”

“What? Oh no, baby, don’t worry—“

“I’m not WORRIED,” I snarl.

“I’m just—here, look.” He spreads his jacket on the floor, then his shirt, then his pants. “I just didn’t want you to be cold.”

I stare down at the floor, and bite my lip hard. After a moment I add my shirt and pants and lie down on the makeshift blanket, looking up at him. “Well come on. Warm me up, then.”

Marsh smiles and that’s enough to make me warm, yes this fantasy is disgusting, if you don’t like it get out of my head. He lies down on top of me and I pull him down with my arms and legs to make him do it faster. And there it is again, that calming weight. I can’t get away and I never want to.

“You’re naked,” he remarks.

“So are you, idiot.”

“I know, it’s just amazing.” We laugh. He gently pushes aside my hair and kisses first one eyelid, then the other, then my nose. I kiss his nose too, which is absurdly handsome—straight, but with a bump just below the bridge—and then I can’t stand any more treacle and bite his lower lip.

He growls deep in his throat and thrusts forward with his hips, pinning my hands to the floor again as his mouth clamps down on mine. I whimper and squirm and I could probably come this way, soon, but I don’t want to, I want to come with him inside me. But I can’t say so because my mouth is forcibly occupied and I can’t even move my hands, oh god, Marsh, just pin me down like a butterfly, I want you so bad.

I’m getting lightheaded when he finally lets go of my mouth. “What a terrible chore this bargain is,” he says, licking my neck. “I sure hope we can get it over with quickly.” He rubs the tops of his feet against the soles of mine.

I let out a strangled giggle, and after a second he laughs too.

“Can you breathe?” he asks.

I make a tiny choking sound and let my head roll to the side.

“AAAH—oh you little BASTARD—“

I’m laughing too hard to speak.

He swats me on the arm, then immediately apologizes.

I give him the storeroom eyes, and breathe, “Do it again.”

Marsh stares at me. “Huh?”

“But on the face.”

“Wha—really?”

“Yes.”

He frowns. I almost expect a lecture on healthy sexuality, but then he lays his palm against my cheek, and gives it a tentative tap.

“Oh come _on_.”

He tries again.

“Harder, you dolt.”

Again.

“That barely even made a _noise_.”

“I don’t want to hurt you!”

“But I WANT you to.”

“But why?”

I dig my nails into his ass as hard as I can, grinding up. He gasps. “Oh. Okay. I think I take your point.”

“You already took my point.” I poke the bandage on his back.

“Ow! You little—“ He grabs my hair and forces my head back.

“Little what?”

Instead of answering, he gives me a respectable slap on the cheek. Butterflies.

“Harder.”

“Goddamnit—“ A louder crack this time.

My hips jerk. “HARDER.”

SMACK.

“HAR—oh!” The last, most brutal slap leaves me gasping and flopping like a fish on a line. His fingers come back to stroke my poor abused cheek, and I turn my face to take them in my mouth one at a time, completing the fish metaphor. Simile. Whatever.

My fisherman is very excited about his catch, and I’m very excited to be caught, because I’m perverse like that. I still struggle, of course, to give him proper sport, but our struggle is a bit slower than with most fish.

“Bite me,” I gasp finally, and he pulls his fingers out and runs them down my neck.

“You are just full of demands.” He licks my shoulder and collarbone, and finally sucks on my throat hard enough to leave a bruise. I whine, and he sinks his teeth in. _Oh_.

He comes back up to hold the back of my head with his other hand, and slowly fucks my mouth with his fingers, and I forget what self-control ever was.

After an eternity but also not long enough, he removes them and starts kissing and licking my neck again, then my chest. I’m too blissed out to care that he’s not biting, he can do whatever he wants to me. His mouth fastens on my right nipple and I guess I don’t moan loud enough because he wrings the left one _really_ hard. I flop like a fish again and he chuckles without taking his mouth away.

“You have to do the other one now, it’s not EVEN,” I gasp.

“Oh, do I?”

“Yes!”

“And what if I don’t?” He tweaks the left one again.

“AAAAAH.”

“Oh, poor baby.”

“AAAAHHHHH STOP IT.”

He lets go.

“Please just—please do the other one—“

“Well all right, because you asked nicely.”

“Ohhhhh…mmmm—nghh.”

He surfaces once I finally relax. “If you like things even, why do you keep your hair over one eye like that?”

“Answers _later_ , remember?”

“Yeah all right,” he grumbles.

I reach up to touch his hair. “Yours is nice and even,” I say. “It suits you.” I’m not going to tell him this, but I have a feeling, a superstition maybe, that the degree of bilateral symmetry in a person’s hair reflects how balanced and forthright they are. Strong, grounded people don’t have much to hide.

“Well, thanks,” he says awkwardly, and decides to move on down the line, so to speak.

“I could insult you if it would make you feel better,” I suggest.

He looks up from my navel. “I’m good, thanks.”

“Mmm, you _are_. Uh, sorry.”

“Huh?”

“For complimenting you.”

“That’s okay,” he says seriously, as if I were apologizing for stepping on his toe. Which I have not done, by the way. I would like to apologize to his toes directly. But we’re busy right now.

I let my head fall back onto his jacket as he moves his mouth lower, running his big callused hands up and down my sides and in little circles on my hips. GET ON WITH IT MARSH. Although this does feel nice. His hands move down to my legs and gently push them further open, and I arch my back. He begins to nibble on my thighs, and I complain, “Didn’t you miss a spot on the way?”

“Did I? Where?”

“It was a rather large spot. Maybe not quite as large as yours, but still, I would think it would be noticeable.”

“Huh, I guess I’m not very observant. Maybe if you gave me directions.”

“It’s the ONLY PROMINENT LANDMARK south of my face. Does that help?”

He lifts his head and looks around in all directions. “Oh, it must be that,” he says, pointing to my raised knee.

“Wrong. North of there.”

He blinks. “Oh! How could I have missed that?”

“I don’t know, because you were trying to punish me for doing the same thing earlier?”

He flutters his eyelashes. “Would I do that?”

“I guess you would— _ohhhh._ ” His tongue is suddenly right where I want it, moving in slow strokes up the shaft. My feet move helplessly. His mouth closes over the head and I cry out and arch up again, and then his hand, below—and _oh oh oh Marsh_ I’m biting my hand to keep from calling your name, and those slow maddening strokes, and I just can’t, I’m going to—NO DON’T STOP WHAT THE FUCK. I shriek in protest and kick the floor, and he laughs like the cruel, cruel monster he is.

“Didn’t you want me to do…something else?”

“I got distracted, okay?” I shake my head to clear it, but it doesn’t work. “Where’s the lube then? We had lube, right?”

He sits up and reaches up to the edge of the crate. “I think it was up here.”

I quickly flip over on my belly, disarranging the ‘blanket.’

“Aww,” he says, “I’d like to see your face. Not that this view isn’t…spectacular.”

I don’t. Who wants another reminder that you’re not really there? Although maybe I would like to look at him. Mostly, though, I turned over because I want to feel him all warm and solid against my back. Maybe he’ll do that, after he fucks me. He’s going to _fuck me_. Shivers.

I look back at him over my shoulder, and just plead with my eyes, because all my words have left me.

He smiles. “Well, since you put it that way…” He runs his hands down my back, and then my ass— _oh_! He kneads it and I press my face to his jacket and whimper. I get up on my hands and knees and hear him inhale, and then I hear the the lube packet ripping, FINALLY. Squelching sounds. How seductive. They actually are though, that’s how far gone I am. Then he’s touching my—oh god ohhhh—and rubbing the lube around it and oh, oh, oh, his finger—it’s inside me—ohhh—it’s too slow, it’s so slow, and I wail.

“Is that okay, baby?” he asks anxiously, and I’m too far gone to yell at him for calling me that, all I can say is _more_.

“Further in, or more fingers?”

“YES.”

To his credit, Marsh doesn’t laugh at me. He slowly retracts the first finger, rubbing gently around the rim, and then there are two pushing in with the shortest little strokes, mmm, and I give up because he is clearly not going to add another one until I take them in all the way, so I relax and slowly roll my hips back, and his strokes get deeper and deeper and he’s rubbing _that spot_ and I forget my resolution to let him do as he will and press my forehead to the floor and beg. “Please please please fuck me, put your cock in me now, I’ll die if you don’t, I need you.”

His fingers stop moving, and I hear him swallowing. “Okay, baby. Just a moment, okay?”

I make an inarticulate small noise that I hope he takes as assent, and his fingers slowly slide out. More squelching. I don’t care. Marsh I’m so cold and empty, I’m going to float away into space, I need you to pin me down and make me warm.

Then his other hand rests on my hip, so warm, and strong, and I feel something blunter and slicker pushing against my entrance, that is a funny word but what else are you going to call it, _knock knock who’s there_ —and it pushes in, _oh god_ , and I think he didn’t mean to shove it in so fast because he growls and it ends in a funny strangled shriek, except maybe that was me shrieking because it’s so—so—

“Sorry sorry are you okay—“

“YES YOU IDIOT JUST FUCK ME FOR FUCK’S SAKE—“

“Hey,” he grunts, seizing hold of my hip with one hand and smacking my ass with the other. “Manners.”

I melt into the floor again and sob. “Oh please more, sorry, please, hit me again, please.”

He catches his breath and thrusts forward again, then pulls most of the way out, and spanks me several times, hard, a little higher than I like but what are you going to do at that angle, then sinks in again with a groan. Then I guess he remembers about making things even, because he switches hands to slap the other side. I gasp and wriggle with each blow, a fish on his hook again, just…a little different this time.

“I can’t anymore, I have to—“ he moans.

“Yeah yeah just do it, fuck me now—“

He takes hold of my hips with both hands, and shoves in again and again, making these deep sounds in his throat. “Are you finally happy now?” he breathes.

“Oh yes fuck yes Marsh Marsh Marsh—“

He stops. _Oh shit_. “Did you just yell someone else’s name?”

“No, that’s YOUR name.” _It is, I swear!_

“No it’s not!”

“Well it is NOW!”

“What?!”

“Goddammit Marsh just fuck me, I’ll explain later.” Maybe.

“If I were not _already_ …”

“Yeah yeah come on.”

He sighs, and I push back, squeezing hard, and he groans and jerks his hips. After a few thrusts he stops again. “Do I get to give you a name too?”

“Sure, whatever, I don’t care, just MOVE.”

“Hmm. Well, I’ll ask you later then.”

I grunt in agreement, and then moan because he’s moving inside me again with smooth, deliberate slow strokes, leaning forward to cover me with his body, and we howl at the absence of a moon.

***

We’re lying boneless and limp in a pile, me on top of him this time because he said he wanted it. One of his arms is around me and the other is flung out along the floor. I burrow into the hollow between his neck and shoulder and inhale. I wish we had a blanket.

“So why did you call me Marsh?”

I groan. “Noooo no interrogations yet, I was having such a nice time.”

“Awww.” He strokes my hair. “You can’t get away with that forever though. I am firm in my purpose.”

“You’re firm in your something.”

He lifts up his other hand, and lets it flop back down onto the floor. We laugh. “I still need to call you something though.”

“No you don’t.” That’s all I need, two obnoxious nicknames.

“You called me Marsh.”

“Well, you already called me Stabonov.”

“Well, yeah. I guess that works. It sounds like some kind of…spy drama.”

I yawn. “That’s what I am, spy drama all the way down.”

“Marsh sounds like a detective novel. Inspector Marsh.”

“But I barely know her!”

“How old are you, _ten_?”

“I think you should know by now I’m at least twice that old.”

“Mmm, you certainly are.”

I rub his beautiful, beautiful chest with sleepy fingers and start to drift off. His other arm comes up around me. “It’s stupid,” I say suddenly.

“Huh?”

“The name. I mean, the reason for it. That’s why I don’t want to tell you.”

“How is it stupid?”

“Cause it is.”

“That’s not a _reason_.”

“Because I thought you were soft. At first.”

He looks like he’s thinking of making a joke, but decides better of it.

“Like a marshmallow. But I realized you weren’t, so I called you Marsh instead.”

He’s silent. I hold my breath. Finally, he says, “Didn’t marshmallows start out as some kind of flower? That grew in a swamp? And they made candy out of them somehow?” I guess he saw the same documentary I did.

“Out of the root, I think.”

“Weird thing to make candy out of.”

“When life hands you swamp roots, make…fluffy swamp root candy?”

He stirs. “So I’m a swamp, huh? I’m not sure what I think about that. It sounds…damp.”

“You _are_ damp.”

“Who made me that way?”

“Okay okay.” I trace a design on his chest with my finger, and he shivers. I lay my palm flat to calm him. “I’ve never seen one.”

“A kni—uh, a swamp?”

“Yeah. They don’t have any marshes where I come from. They sound…nice.” No trash, no concrete, no broken glass or mystery effluvia, just water and reeds and birds and little things singing because they have somewhere safe to hide.

He strokes the back of my neck with a tentative hand, then starts to rub. I sigh in pleasure and let my head loll. “Maybe you can see one some day.”

“Mmph,” I grunt noncommittally, not wanting the neck rub to stop.

And this is the point where he should tell me some place he’s always wanted to go, maybe a place that includes a symbolic reference to me in it, but how do you get a travel destination out of Stabanov? Yeah, I’ve always wanted to see the scenic alleyways of Novii Stabsk and get slashed with an authentic locally-sourced broken bottle still dripping cheap vodka. Disinfects the wounds as soon as it makes them!

But I don’t know him and I don’t know where he wants to go. If I want to find out…I’ll have to ask him. In real life. Frightening thought.

Well, better finish this.

Eventually his fingers slow down and come to rest on my upper back. “Soooo.”

“So.”

He raises his eyebrows. “So?”

“So.”

“You’re stalling.”

“Yes.”

“Is it really that hard to say?”

I sit up, straddling him, and draw circles on his chest again. “Marsh, you know once we leave this room I’m probably going to have to stab you again. Worse than last time.”

He looks up at me. “Right away?”

“Well no, but if you keep mouthing off, which you seem unable to stop doing, it seems likely.”

“I don’t see,” he says carefully, “why that means you have to stab me.”

“You know why.”

“I’ve been mouthing off to you this whole time and you haven’t stabbed me. I don’t think you give yourself enough credit for self-restraint.”

I swat him lightly. “You know it’s not me that wants you stabbed.”

“Ah. Yes. Your…associate.”

I look away, trying not to wince.

“Why can’t he just stab me himself, and leave you out of it?”

“Oh, he could. But you don’t want him to stab you. He’s…not as nice as I am.”

Marsh folds his hands behind his head to prop it up. If I had a camera I could make my own private beefcake pinup calendar. Mr. March. “Well, that’s obvious. But it doesn’t answer my question.”

“There are a LOT of people to stab. Look, you’re basically asking why people collaborate.”

“Well, what’s the common goal of this collaboration?”

“I didn’t say there was a common goal.”

“Well, what’s your goal?”

I look away again. “I just…want to help Him achieve His goals.” _Oh you liar_.

“That’s very…helpful of you. And what are his goals?”

“None of your business.” He looks at me and I sigh. “If I’d known what His plan was, I’d never have agreed to tell you what I knew.” I have my suspicions, but those aren’t facts, so they’re not part of the deal.

Marsh struggles into a sitting position. “Goddammit. You just follow him blindly?”

“I don’t—He’s just important to me, okay?”

“Why?”

That question. “He just is.”

“You promised you’d tell me.”

“Because—”

“Why?”

I’m sweating again. “I—I—“

He strokes my hair.

“I love Him,” I whisper in his ear, then bite my hand because I said it out loud. I can’t look at Marsh’s face.

I feel his hand on my back, rubbing gently. “Try to breathe, okay?”

I draw in a long, shuddering breath, and it’s like pulling a rag through the eye of a needle. “Shut up. I’m _fine_. Will you just—will you just fucking kiss me again so I don’t have to think about this for another moment?”

He gathers me closer and presses his lips to mine. I suddenly remember that we’re naked. I had forgotten, like a reverse Garden of Eden. The angel with the flaming sword drove us in, not out, and now we eat of the tree whose fruit is both knowledge and death.

Okay, enough of this crap. We did it again, but standing up this time because we were tired of the floor, and also on the crate, and up against the wall. We screamed loud enough to crack the hull and the entire room caught fire, and nobody noticed because we don’t exist. We burned to ash and became skeletons and kept on fucking, or trying to, until we discovered that we could _swap our bones_ , and this was suddenly the most hilarious thing ever, me with his superhero jaw and long dangly arms and him toddling around on my tiny bird legs, and then we thought of combining into one long snakelike variegated monster and surging out into the corridor—

But this is not a proper story. It is not even a proper improper story. Some things are not even fit to be imagined. I should stick to the sex and the tender doomed bud of our romance because that’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? You don’t want to know about how badly I want to burn everything down. Or maybe you do.

This time we ended up bent over the crate, which is not a comfortable position for dozing off. It’s so hard to leave him though. After a minute he pulled out and let me up, and tried to slide down the wall into a sitting position and drag me down onto his lap. I desperately wanted this but I pulled away because otherwise it would never end. You notice how I switched to past tense? That’s because I’m trying to get this over with.

Then I changed my mind and sat in his lap anyway. What can I say, I’m weak, and I’ll most likely kill him in the morning. “We really, really need a shower,” I told him romantically, kissing one of the romantic new bruises where I had romantically kicked him in the chest earlier. My ass hurt and we were sticky and sweaty and my feet were cold and I still never, ever want to get out of this position so I am switching back to present tense. “Is there a shower in here?”

He looks around. “I don’t see one.”

“What kind of a storage room is it if it doesn’t store the things you need?”

“My…um…my room has one.” He hastily retracts. “Or your room. I mean, if you didn’t want to go to my room.”

I put a finger to his lips and smile up at him. “Careful. You’re getting close to stabbing territory.”

“I mean, uh, if you didn’t want me to be there.”

I scramble to my feet in a burst of resolve. “Yeah, well, I guess you should be dressed if I were going to stab you anyway, I don’t want the girls to see you naked.”

It takes him a moment. “Jealous?”

“It’s INDECENT.”

“But sticking them into my body isn’t?”

“Now that you put it that way…well, at least they can’t see you.”

“So,” Marsh ponders, getting to his feet, “if you’re about to stab me, I should just take my clothes off?”

I pause to consider the image. “Now that you said that, I might have to get another knife. Just for you.”

“Aww, I’m flattered!” _Dammit_. “But won’t that one mind seeing me naked too?”

“No, it’s only my knives. My current ones. Actually Galya probably wouldn’t mind but she’s not old en—”

He raises his eyebrows. “They have names and ages and genders too?”

“YES. Got a problem with that?”

“No,” he says meekly, folding his hands together. I’m picking up my clothes from the floor when I hear, “Could I, um—could I meet them? When I’m dressed?”

I turn to stare at him. “You’re asking to meet my knives on the first date? Isn’t that a little soon?”

He blushes. “Sorry, I—I only asked because you said you were probably going to stab me after this.”

“Well, yeah. Umm. This is a little awkward. You really need to be more presentable first.”

“So I don’t even have to be naked to keep from being stabbed, I just have to be dirty?”

“Only for formal introductions, malchik. Don’t get cocky.”

“No, sir,” he salutes.

I narrow my eyes, and deliberately draw one fingernail down the center line of his chest. He catches his breath. “Watch out, or I _will_ find another knife.”

Marsh nods, eyes half closed. “You know,” he says carefully, “if he saw us together outside, you could just pull a knife on me and say you were, you know, threatening me. Because you would be. It wouldn’t be a lie.”

He’s trying to subvert me. I wrap my hand around the back of his head and tilt it down to face me. “Look, Marsh. You’re cute and all, I’ll give you that. But if He tells me to, I _will_ slit your throat.”

I don’t wait to see his reaction, I just turn aside to get dressed. When I’m done, I turn back to look at him. He’s wiping my come off the floor with his shirt! Why doesn’t he just leave it there? They won’t care who it came from, they’ll just swear and argue about who has to clean it up. He’s going to _wear my come_. Under his jacket, even. What a weirdo. My dick twitches, but I just can’t deal with any more of this right now. I open the door and peek out to check if the coast is clear, and when I turn my head in the other direction _He’s_ suddenly there.

“Where were you? What were you doing in there?” He sniffs, flaring His nostrils, and scowls. “WHO were you doing in there?”

I just look at Him, the corners of my mouth tugging up. He narrows His eyes, and pushes past me to throw the door open. “YOU. What the fuck were you doing with my—with him.” I hear an indignant snarl from inside, and He shoves His way into the room. _Crash. Topple. Grunt. Thud. Scuffle. Roar_. I close my eyes, lean against the wall, and smile.

**Author's Note:**

> As you may have noticed if you read this far, Deimos has no problem talking in his own imagination. When I started this story, I figured that with someone who is usually mute, you basically have two options when it comes to writing from their POV: you can assume that they think non-verbally or with minimal verbiage, and try to describe everything as if they weren’t using words to think; or you can assume that they are bursting at the seams with unspoken stories and commentary. Deimos certainly looks like he’s having some choice thoughts about what’s going on, so I decided the second option would be more fun. Once I started letting him talk, he took over and there was basically no going back.
> 
> Referring to Cain in deistic capitalized pronouns? I’m sorry, I know that is gross. But Deimos has, you know, some *issues.* Plus it was a handy way to avoid using the name that I’m sure he refused to give Deimos. 
> 
> My reasoning for assigning Colony Three to Praxis is like this: Praxis acts and speaks in a very middle-class way, or at least like an aspirational person doing a damn good job of imitating it. He even tells his fantasy Abel that he wants him “badly,” which I find hilarious—who says “I want you badly” in their own fantasy? It also seems likely that he’s had a more secure emotional upbringing than Cain or Deimos, given that he actually has, you know, boundaries, which implies that he had a stable family structure of some kind. I imagine him as a nice Catholic boy from a big family who’s really homesick and adrift on the ship. All this implies that he might be from a place that is financially better-off or at least more well-established than Colony Five. It seemed logical to me that the older a colony was, the better established and more secure and generally less “wild” it would be. I know it’s more complicated than that in real life, but I didn’t want to get too detailed in case Hamlet gives us more info (I would like to avoid actually conflicting with canon if I can help it). So I needed a colony that was more established than Five but still rough enough that you’d get someone who feels comfortable brawling, so I figured hey, why not Three.


End file.
